Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 25, 1993 TAG: 9309250218
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO G
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP and MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She called her husband, Marty, who was away on a job in Ohio. As she waited for sheriff's deputies to arrive at her Rockbridge County trailer, Marty, the child's stepfather, said the unspeakable:
"Cindy, do you think Billy did that?"
Cindy Layne didn't want to think that Marty's brother Billy could have taken Phadra Dannielle Carter.
"I was trying not to think that was possible," she said.
Someone, she said, told deputies that a car like Billy Layne's roared past her as she called into the darkness for her child.
Police heard other theories in the middle of that crazy night. They searched for two boys Cindy Layne suspected. They heard from others that it might all be a hoax. They wondered whether there had even been an abduction. Maybe Phadra had run away, or her mother was hiding her for some reason, they thought.
Despite all that, Virginia law says police are supposed to report missing children - runaways and kidnap victims alike - to surrounding law enforcement departments immediately.
The Laynes and some neighbors say it took the Rockbridge County Sheriff's Department too long to get on Phadra's trail.
Sheriff Bob Day said his officers did the best they could, under the circumstances. "Right now, I believe we did," Day said Thursday.
Eileen Sargent, the Laynes' next-door neighbor, is disappointed with the department. "I don't think they were any help at all - or had any concern until it was too late."
They should have put the word out about Phadra and the car immediately, Sargent said. "Just maybe somebody would have seen her."
The Sheriff's Department told police in the county seat of Lexington that Phadra was missing two hours after her mother called. But it was at least 15 hours before the department alerted police outside the county about the abduction.
By that time, Phadra Carter is believed to have been dead for hours, beaten to death in neighboring Botetourt County. Dr. David Oxley, chief deputy medical examiner for Western Virginia, said she probably died "sometime in the early morning hours."
Billy Layne, 40, was arrested Monday morning in Smyth County. He faces capital murder charges in the death of a little girl he is said to have adored.
The child will be buried today with her new cowboy boots, a Barbie, and her "Happy Pillow" that helped drive away nightmares.
All week, Cindy Layne has thought back on the hours after she found her daughter's bed empty, about what she could have said that might have saved her life, about why she didn't take her husband's suspicions more seriously.
"You don't want to think about your brother-in-law doing that," she said.
"I feel guilty about that."
Cindy Layne had been awakened early Saturday by voices coming from her living room. When she came out, she saw that the front window had been boosted open, and a scatter rug was holding the screen door ajar. Phadra's bedspread was on the front steps.
It was 2:31 a.m. when the Sheriff's Department got CinLayne's call for help at Johnson's Trailer Park in Arnolds Valley.
"I told them somebody done kidnapped my daughter," she said. "That I'd seen 'em going down the road."
Layne was most suspicious of two teen-age brothers who'd been hanging around the park. She suggested deputies check a favorite teen parking spot near the James River Recreational Area, a private camp nearby.
A notation on the radio log at the sheriff's department at 2:33 a.m. Saturday shows an officer checked the spot but found nothing.
She told police about her brother-in-law, too. "I mentioned Billy's name in passing because I thought about his car."
Sheriff Day said it takes awhile for his men to travel to Arnolds Valley, in the mountainous southeastern tip of Rockbridge County.
Sargent, the Laynes' neighbor, said it was at least 45 minutes, and perhaps an hour, before a deputy arrived. By then, she said, Billy Layne could have driven Phadra to the rural area of Botetourt County where investigators believe she was killed - and where her body was found Wednesday in a shallow grave.
Through her open bedroom window in the first hours of Saturday, not 20 feet from the Laynes' trailer, Sargent heard Cindy calling for Phadra.
Through another window, facing the street, Sargent said she saw a tall, thin man holding Phadra by the arm. "She was up on her feet but you could see that she wasn't going willingly. He was pulling her arm."
He told her, "Hush up. Come on."
"I could tell at that point it was no boy," Sargent said. "It was a man. It was a rough voice."
Sargent said Cindy Layne may still have suspected the teen-age brothers, however, because the older one is tall.
Sargent said she and Layne ran into the street. A car flew past, and Layne jumped out of the way. Sargent said the car's lights were off, so she couldn't read the license plates.
She said the first deputy to arrive took notes on Phadra's description but didn't ask for a photo. Layne got one, at Sargent's suggestion. The deputy looked at it and gave it back, Sargent said.
"I believe he thought this was a neighborhood or child prank, some kids running off," Sargent said. "The shape that the mother was in at that point, he should've known something was wrong."
Layne says she was hysterical, and that she was on pain pills for jaw and back troubles. That is why, she said, she didn't hear her daughter leave the trailer that night.
She says the deputies didn't seem to believe her daughter had been taken against her will.
The first one, she said, asked, " `You sure she didn't run away?' And we told him we saw a guy drag her away."
Layne said she told the deputy that her daughter was too afraid of the dark to go off on her own. And if she'd gone willingly, she would have worn shoes. The mother said the child was wearing only a dorm shirt and underpants.
"They just acted like she had gone out joy riding with some boys, or she done run away. They didn't take any evidence. [But] they looked around, you know."
As soon as Layne realized Phadra was gone, she called lots of family, even though it was the middle of the night. The word quickly reached Phadra's father, Jackie Smith, in nearby Natural Bridge Station.
Phadra - named Carter from her mother's prior marriage to another man - was supposed to have been a flower girl in her father's wedding that afternoon.
Layne said Smith "insinuated" to an officer at her trailer Saturday morning that Phadra might have been sent away to interfere with his wedding.
Smith said Friday that he arrived at the trailer about 30 minutes after Layne called police, but he did not want to discuss the day's events until after Phadra's funeral.
Early doubts about the legitimacy of the abduction report are indicated in a Rockbridge sheriff's log note made at 4:12 a.m. It says: "Not real sure if there is a [sic] actual abduction. Poss [sic] a tan or yellow Subaru."
The Sheriff's Department did send out a B.O.L. - a "be on the lookout" notice - to Lexington police at 4:17 a.m. City police said it contained nothing about suspects but did include a description of the car in which the child was driven away.
At 8:24 a.m., the Sheriff's Department got a call that led them further off the track of Billy Layne.
The mother of one of the boys Cindy Layne had suspected reported that her 13-year-old son was missing.
Layne agreed with the officers that it might have something to do with Phadra.
It was such a coincidence - two kids who knew each other, missing at the same time. "At the time, we were thinking the two were together," Sheriff Day said.
As it turns out, Day said, the boy spent the night with a young girl at the trailer park, but not Phadra.
Marty Layne got in from Cleveland about noon Saturday.
He said his wife went to the Sheriff's Department after 4 p.m. to sign a form so officers could send out a teletype on Phadra's abduction.
Day said the teletype went out at 5:36 p.m. Saturday, more than 15 hours after Phadra was reported missing.
Day said it could have been sent earlier in the day if Cindy Layne had come in to his office earlier. "She had been asked to come in earlier." The Laynes could not be reached Friday for comment on that.
State law forbids police and sheriff's departments from observing any waiting period before accepting a missing-child report.
"Immediately upon receipt of a missing-child report by any police or sheriff's department," the law says, "the department shall forward the report" to the state police's Missing Children Information Clearinghouse. The officers also are required to "notify all other law-enforcement agencies in the area."
Sgt. D.W. MacKenzie, duty sergeant in charge of Virginia's clearinghouse, said officers may take time to ascertain whether a complaint is legitimate, "just like anything else they're working on." But they should report a runaway just as promptly as they would report a kidnapped child, he said.
Day did not return a call to his office Friday.
Botetourt County Sheriff Reed Kelly won't comment on the delay in notifying area departments. He does say that the Rockbridge Sheriff's Department has worked well with his officers on the search for Phadra and the investigation of her death.
Copies of the teletype printouts on file at the Botetourt Sheriff's Department, obtained under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, indicate that the first official notification from Rockbridge to area law enforcement agencies went out at 7:51 p.m. and was received by the Botetourt Sheriff's Department at 7:52 p.m. It's unclear why there's a discrepancy between when Day says his department sent the teletype and the time it was received in Botetourt.
The transmission said:
**BOL** MISSING JUVENILE - INVOLUNTARY **BOL** JUVENILE WAS ABDUCTED FROM HER RESIDENCE IN OUR COUNTY THIS DATE AT APPROX. 0227 HOURS IN THE GLASGOW AREA. UNK DIRECTION OF TRAVEL. SHE IS POSSIBLY IN A BEIGE STATION WAGON WITH A LUGGAGE RACK ON TOP. UNK TAG.
The teleype does not name Billy Layne as a suspect. But Botetourt and Rockbridge deputies apparently talked by phone after the teletype because a handwritten notation at the bottom of the teletype - written after it was received - says Layne was a possible suspect.
Kelly has said his deputies were aware by Saturday night that Layne might be involved and were on the lookout for him in the Flatwoods area of Botetourt County, where Layne had been living. Officers also looked for him all day Sunday, Kelly said.
The next teletype that the department received came Sunday afternoon. It says it was sent from Rockbridge at 2:44 p.m.
It was marked special attention to law officers in Southwest Virginia and Tennessee. It said Layne was "wanted for questioning" in the abduction.
It noted that Layne was the girl's step-uncle. It said he was in a 1977 yellow Toyota with gray primer on the right fender.
Another teletype, at 8:24 p.m. Sunday, alerted police agencies in Southwest Virginia and Tennessee that felony warrants were on file for Layne.
Day said his deputies searched forest roads around Arnolds Valley for the child, as well as in nearby Glasgow and Natural Bridge.
One problem, he said, was that Cindy Layne kept saying the driver was in a light-colored Subaru. Day said Billy Layne drove a yellow Toyota.
Day came to see Cindy and Marty Layne early Saturday evening. Day said Cindy didn't seem as distraught as he had expected.
"When I talked to her, she was giggly and bubbly and kinda silly," he said. "And I never saw her break down and cry until Sunday evening."
He was so dubious about her story, he said, "I asked her if she'd be willing to take a polygraph."
Marty Layne wishes the deputies had started looking for Billy much earlier.
"They just thought that something else happened. They didn't take it serious enough."
"Once they had a good lead, I think they did a good job."
He wishes they had blocked roads in the area.
To that, Day said: "Where are you going to put a roadblock up at?" In other words, which of the dozens of roads in the area should he have blocked?
Saturday, parents in the trailer park talked with their children about Phadra. It apparently was then that Phadra's friends said she had told them that Billy Layne tried to molest her in her bed over Labor Day weekend. The children said she was able to resist him then.
Sunday morning, Cindy Layne said, she and her husband were up at 6:30, talking long and hard about Billy.
Marty Layne said he believes his brother Billy met Phadra over the Labor Day weekend. "He'd only been here that one time. That was one of the first times he met her."
For most of Phadra's life, Marty said, Billy had been in prison. Phadra was a baby in 1984, when Billy began a long sentence for a series of burglaries and larcenies.
Over Labor Day, Billy and Phadra seemed to hit it off, Marty said. "Both of 'em, they seemed to like each other, playing and all."
Cindy said Billy never did anything to make her uneasy about his being around Phadra. "No, not ever. I never had any inkling that he could do anything like that."
About 7:30 Sunday morning, Cindy said her husband told her they needed to talk again with the Sheriff's Department.
"He said, `I think we ought to call and tell them about Billy.' "
"Marty said he knew before they caught him that it was him."
She said she called and gave a more complete description of Billy Layne's car.
Does Marty Layne think Billy killed Phadra?
"I do," he said. "Yeah."
Correspondent Leigh Allen contributed to this story.
by CNB